The Silent Patient- Alex Michaelides

“You become increasingly comfortable with madness – and not just the madness of others, but your own. We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”

Ratings: 4.5⭐

Genre: Fiction; Psychological thriller

Number of Pages: 336

Format: Paperback

Publication date: 5th April 2019

Publisher: Celadon books 

The Silent Patient- Alex Michaelides

The Silent Patient is the debut work of Alex Michaelides that received the Goodreads Choice Awards for best mystery and thriller (2019). 

“Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”

Summary

Alicia Berenson, a known painter is married to a famous photographer, Gabriel Berenson, and has a seemingly perfect life, until one evening when Gabriel returns from a photoshoot, Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never says a word to anyone. This causes massive public interest in her case and the price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, is really keen on Alicia and her case and has always wanted to work with her. He knows only he can make her talk. But does he really want her to? Is he ready to hear the truth? The truth that can even devour him…

“There’s so much pain everywhere, and we just close our eyes to it. The truth is we’re all scared. We’re terrified of each other.”

Personal reviews

As someone who’s a sucker for psychological thrillers, I had to pick this up as a lot of buzz was created around it. When I read the book in one go, I realized that the hype was actually worth it because it is actually unputdownable once you’ve read the first part. I love the fast pace, the way the story unfolds, and the little surprises that I got almost at the end of every chapter, not to mention the plot twist that made me turn the pages all over again and think “what exactly did I miss” and then I was like “ah I should have seen this coming”.

The characters are solid and the use of dialogues is strong. I love the references to Alcestis and Greek mythology. The end of the book is again a cliffhanger that leaves you with a lot of unsettling questions. While I would love it if we get a second part to the book, I don’t really mind an end like this. I’m glad I picked this book up and totally loved it and highly recommend it to the lovers of psychological thrillers. 

About the Author

Alex Michaelides, author of The SilentPatient

Alex Michaelides was born in 1977 and raised in Cyprus. He has an M.A. in English literature from Trinity College, Cambridge University, and an M.A. in screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The Silent Patient was his first novel and was the biggest-selling debut in the world in 2019. It spent more than a year on the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller list and sold in a record-breaking forty-nine countries, with over a million copies sold.

He studied psychotherapy for three years and worked for two years at a secure unit for young adults. This work provided material and inspiration for his debut novel The Silent Patient. Michaelides decided to set his novel in a psychiatric unit as he had worked at a secure psychiatric facility for teenagers while he was a psychotherapy student. The Athenian tragedy Alcestis, by Euripides, served as an inspiration for the plot, while its narrative structure was influenced by Agatha Christie’s writing.